Chronicles of Gaia: Prologue to the adventure
by Shell Outsider
Summary: The distant planet of Gaia is facing imminent danger. For fifteen years its inhabitants have been fighting a fierce war. The mighty Crimsonwing Empire plans to conquer everything in its wake and the Gaians' only hope of surviving the onslaught are the ancient arts of magic. A group of adventurers find themselves involved in the conflict and it might be up to them to resolve it.


I – Road into the unknown

The skies of Gaia, blue with a light purplish hue, were almost entirely untainted by clouds and the lush light blue plant life covering the ground seemed to linger in as state of slumber, the same kind that befell the residents of the industrial town of Mist-Valley, which the crew of the truck caravan could see in the distance. The plants, however, did not seem to suffer from the hellish heat that ruined the almost perfect summer afternoon, not nearly as much as the truck drivers did, at least.

Throughout their rough trip through the fields and crags of the Nebelfelsen mountain range the truckers constantly wanted to drink and sleep, but were, due to the highly important nature of their assignment, not allowed to take even the smallest break and stalwartly led the cargo trucks loaded with energy elements to Centrum, the far-removed capital of the Human Republic. And so, hands on the steering wheel, eyes on the road, they were dead-set on carrying out their number one task: survival. Surviving, however, was no mean feat, for all of the human-commanded territories were under martial law and the news outlets constantly reminded the public of the ever-rising crime rate, as well as the necessity of fending against it. To that end the drivers were armed with light firearms and other weaponry, that even civilians would be able to wield. However, that amount of protection was nowhere near enough to save the caravan from the many dangers it could potentially face during its long, difficult trip.

Therefore, the executives of G-Trade, a sister company of the almighty energy monopoly known as AlphaEnergy Ltd., allocated a budget for hiring a number of experienced adventurers to guard the caravan. The group consisted of a squad of strong and fearless Dwarf warriors who have time and again proven themselves in battle, the finest among them being the fighters Doggit and Krant, led by engineer and honorary knight turned adventurer, Drith. "Hmm… If memory serves, the day we left Gravloch a couple years ago was rather similar to this one" – Drith mused aloud, talking to no one in particular. The memories of his quaint hometown were by no means revolting to him, but they could hardly be described as nostalgic – according to the engineer himself, he'd "seen too much of it for his own good". That statement was not at all false, for, despite being very mentally and physically similar to his miner kinsmen, the Dwarf never inherited their conservative and home-keeping mentality, which seemed to be deeply engrained in the race's subconscious. What he did inherit, however, was a persistent, fervent and steadfast attitude, which was, perhaps, what drove him to become the person he was. Unlike many other Dwarves, he was interested not only in the spacious caverns and precious minerals that lay in the depths of the titanic planet, but also in that, which dwelled above the ground, under the sea and high in the clouds. Drith had a desire to go on globe-trotting adventures, to explore every nook and cranny of Gaia as well as rid it of the many injustices, that plagued its many inhabitants (to the best of his ability, of course).

Perhaps said desire for exploration was what pushed him to become an engineer in the first place – in actuality, a miner's job could, back in the day, fetch one a pretty penny and there was no real need for him to get a degree. But not even his new more prestigious occupation could satisfy the Dwarf's lust for knowledge and adventure. Or maybe the slow but steady depletion of Gravloch's famous gravitonite mines was what made him bid farewell to his home; whatever the case, one day Drith assembled his miner comrades and, after trying to explain how hopeless their dull lives would be if they kept working in the gravitonite mines, convinced a surprising number of fed-up workers who had nothing to lose to leave town and set out on a quest for fame and fortune, a quest, which, unfortunately, would not last too long…

"Hey, wuzzat about old bud? Ya getting homesick or sumthin'?" – Doggit's question distracted Drith from his pondering. "Eh? Oh, c'mon, if that was supposed to be a joke, it sure wasn't funny! Or is this heat gettin' to your head? Yeah, that must be it… my brains are boiling as well, hence why I keep mumbling all kinds of things. Oh no, I certainly don't miss our dump whatsoever, Shin forbid!" – the engineer retaliated lively. "An' they say our lads over in ol' Mist-Valley lost 'eir jobs 'cause of those darned miner-robot-thingamajigs! Oh woe! Those elven bastards shot us all in the foot with their progress!" – The never-ending pessimistic tirades of old man Krant that usually went nowhere whatsoever no longer annoyed the Dwarf adventurers, on the contrary, they served as a sort of relaxing background noise that always accompanied their travels. "It's always impressed me, Krant, how you, having lived longer than seven decades, have managed to spend every single second in the past, and the dankest part of it too!" – Drith teased. His elder comrade, however, took no offense, either because he was quite a wise old man, or, perhaps, due to his relative lack of hearing and unwillingness to buy audial implants and generally deal with any kind of new technology. "Yeah, that's right, Krant! You're sorta like those guys we learned about back in tech school! Ya know, the ones from a hundred or two years ago, when the ol' mining robots first- uh… thatsrite, entered aberration, that means they were jus' started bein' used! Those guys wrecked them cuz they were afraid of losing their job! Musta had second sight, them old-timers! You try summin' like that nowadays the calaboose'll welcome you with open arms!" – "Pretty true, what you just said, Doggit! Though, considering how the corporations treat those poor souls that are still willing to work for them, the calaboose might not be all that terrible!" – Drith boomed and the truck proceeded to shake with hearty laughter. But despite being willing to crack jokes and pass it off as no big deal, the Dwarves understood full well just how concerning the situation at hand was. "No, no, my friends! Looking back, we've definitely made the rightest decision we could! Whatever we coulda been doing back in Gravloch now, it wouldn't beat this! We could hardly have been replaced, not with our skills, we wouldn'a been, but it'd not be worth it, not for engineers, not for miners, not for no one. Sorta underhanded, the stuff the government's been pulling on those fellas back on the home front, but we are now licensed adventurers and have avoided that terrible fate! We've already fought quite some battles and are on our road to success! Think of the adventures we've had and the ones, that lie before us – not everybody lives to see a quarter of this stuff! Just you wait, we're gonna make it BIG! Another successful mission or two and we'll be able to register a guild and open an HQ of our own over in Centrum, maybe even get our own little hardware and weapon store, exciting stuff! Oh, they'll respect us same as they do the president's guard, I tell ya! We'll show those imperial creeps what's what, you guys'll be knighted, life ain't never gonna be the same!"

But despite his best efforts to lighten the somewhat somber mood, Drith couldn't completely convince his friends that a bright future was, indeed, waiting for all of them and there was a good reason for that – the entire planet had, after all, been engulfed in the thick black smoke of chaos produced by the destructive alien war for fifteen years. It all began on that fateful morning on the ninth of August, year six hundred eighty-five of the Gaian calendar…


End file.
